MINIMUM WAGE

Hillary Clinton, who has repeatedly made $225,000 an hour talking to her corporate pals, wants to raise the minimum wage to only $12/hour over five years. An editorial in the New York Times criticized this stand:

But instead of embracing $15, Mrs. Clinton fights on for $12, saying that states could set their own, higher minimums. That is cold comfort. Experience has shown that without a robust federal minimum, state minimums also tend to be inadequate….

...Economic obstacles are not standing in the way of a $15-an-hour minimum wage. Misplaced caution and political timidity are. The sooner Mrs. Clinton overcomes those, the stronger her candidacy will be.

Where is Bernie?

He introduced a bill last summer calling for a $15/hour minimum wage, saying:

“It is a national disgrace that millions of full-time workers are living in poverty and millions more are forced to work two or three jobs just to pay their bills,” Sanders said at the outdoor rally near the Capitol. “In the year 2015, a job must lift workers out of poverty, not keep them in it. The current federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour is a starvation wage and must be raised to a living wage.”

2001 BANKRUPTCY BILL

We’ve all read how Elizabeth Warren convinced Hillary to oppose efforts to make it harder for consumers to escape from credit card debt by filing for bankruptcy. Warren recalls, “She said, ‘Professor Warren, we’ve got to stop that awful bill.’ ”

Then, as a newly elected senator representing Wall St, Hillary voted for the bill, which had strong support from the banking and credit card industries.

But Charles J. Tabb, a law professor at the University of Illinois who opposed the legislation, said Mrs. Clinton’s vote “shows the power of the consumer credit industry and our campaign finance world.”

“She did a 180 once she became senator,” he said. “It was galling.”

During the 2008 campaign, asked if she regretted her vote, she said, “Sure, I do. I was happy that it never became law.”

Last year, she changed her story, blaming the whole thing on Joe Biden.

Where was Bernie?

Voting against bankruptcy “reform” bills.

GLASS-STEAGALL

The Glass-Steagall Act that was repealed by Bill Clinton in 1998 is considered to be one of the underlying causes of the financial crisis of 2008. Elizabeth Warren, John McCain, and others have introduced the 21st Century Glass-Steagall Act.

"American's have suffered enough from big banks making them their deep pockets for reckless behavior. It's time to separate commercial from investment banking," Senator Maria Cantwell said.

Hillary Clinton opposes the act and says she has other plans to rein in Wall St.

Robert Reich, addressing her claim that Glass-Steagall would not have prevented the 2008 crisis, simply said, “Baloney.”

Bill and Hillary Clinton have been paid more than $6 million for speeches to Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, Barclays Capital, UBS, and Morgan Stanley. These companies have made additional contributions to the Clinton Foundation and her campaign.

Where was Bernie?

Strongly in support, not only of Glass-Steagall, but of breaking up the too big too fail banks.

DEFENSE OF MARRIAGE ACT

Hillary spoke in support of DOMA at the time, and now says DOMA was a defensive measure taken to ward off a Constitutional amendment. But Rachel Maddow (in a very moving segment you should watch), calls bullshit on that defense because it’s not true.

In 2004, on the floor of the Senate, Clinton said, "I believe marriage is not just a bond but a sacred bond between a man and a woman…. I take umbrage at anyone who might suggest that those of us who worry about amending the Constitution are less committed to the sanctity of marriage, or to the fundamental bedrock principle that it exists between a man and a woman.”

She ran for president in 2008 while openly opposing gay marriage, and did not come out in favor of same-sex marriage until 2013.

Where was Bernie?

Bernie was one of the few in Congress who voted against DOMA. However, he was, as late as 2006, a supporter of civil unions, not same-sex marriage.

NAFTA

Hillary Clinton supported NAFTA when it passed and for years afterward. In 1996, she said "I think everybody is in favor of free and fair trade. I think NAFTA is proving its worth” and in 2004 said, “I think on balance NAFTA has been good for New York and America.”

NAFTA has been a disaster for working people, creating an enormous trade deficit, costing a million or more American jobs, and accelerating the income inequality gap. NAFTA was also a political disaster, a sellout of Democrats by the Clinton administration that cost Democrats control of Congress for years.

Democratic House Speaker Tom Foley, who sided with Clinton. became the first speaker since the Civil War to be defeated for re-election in his own district.

Hillary now claims to oppose NAFTA, just as she’s suddenly reversed position on the Trans-Pacific Partnership after promoting it (“This TPP sets the gold standard in trade agreements to open free, transparent, fair trade”) around the world as Secretary of State.

Don’t believe her on TPP, which is another disaster in the making. As Ian Fletcher writes, “She has, in fact, a long record of verbally criticizing free-trade agreements, but then supporting them when in office.”

Where was Bernie?

He strongly opposed NAFTA.

CLUSTER BOMBS

Hillary Clinton voted (as this 2007 story explains) to let our military continue to use cluster bombs in areas with concentrated civilian populations, despite the thousands of innocent children who have died or been handicapped due to picking up unexploded cluster bomblets.

At issue was an amendment by Senator Diane Feinstein, who said:

I offer an amendment to the Defense appropriations bill to address a humanitarian issue that I have actually thought a great deal about over a long period of time; that is, the use of the cluster bomb. The human death toll and injury from these weapons is felt every day, going back decades. Innocent children think they are picking up a play toy in the field and suddenly their arm is blown off.

A cluster bomb “consists of a canister designed to open in mid-air and disperse smaller submunitions, often referred to as bomblets. Cluster bombs are area weapons, meaning they are not designed to attack a precise target, but rather to destroy all potential targets in a target area.”

HUMAN RIGHTS ABROAD

in 2010-2011, despite her having taken a stand against free trade with Colombia before the 2008 election, Bill and Hillary Clinton worked together to make Colombia safe for corporate interests, despite a very poor record on human rights. Here’s David Sirota:

The State Department publicly praised Colombia’s progress on human rights, thereby permitting hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. aid to flow to the same Colombian military that labor activists say helped intimidate workers.

At the same time that Clinton's State Department was lauding Colombia’s human rights record, her family was forging a financial relationship with Pacific Rubiales, the sprawling Canadian petroleum company at the center of Colombia’s labor strife. The Clintons were also developing commercial ties with the oil giant’s founder, Canadian financier Frank Giustra, who now occupies a seat on the board of the Clinton Foundation, the family’s global philanthropic empire.

﻿It’s hard to convey just how stunningly cynical she has been on Colombia: In 2008, running against Obama, she opposed, in unambiguous terms, a free-trade deal with Colombia. “Senator Clinton’s position is clear and unequivocal: She is opposed to the deal,” said a spokesperson. Yet even as she was telling voters she was against the deal, her chief adviser, Mark Penn, was meeting with Colombian officials to tell them otherwise.

Then it was revealed that Bill Clinton was paid $800,000 by the Colombia-based Gold Service International to give four speeches in Latin America, in which he advocated for the free-trade agreement.

There were at least 13 occasions— worth $2.5 million—when Bill Clinton received a speaking fee from corporations or trade groups that were at the time engaged in lobbying at the State Department while Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State.

Where was Bernie?

Never wavering from his commitment to human rights around the world.

He wrote in his book, for example, of a 1985 trip to Nicaragua to condemn the Reagan war on the people of Central America:

I was introduced to a crowd of hundreds of thousands who gathered for the anniversary celebration. I will never forget that in the front row of the huge crowd were dozens and dozens of amputees in wheelchairs – young soldiers, many of them in their teens, who had lost their legs in a war foisted on them and financed by the U.S. government.

And in 1997, for example, he traveled to Costa Rica in support of workers opposing CAFTA.

And in 1998, for example, he strongly criticized Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin about the IMF’s failure to protect human rights in Indonesia, telling him, “You are not obeying the law.”

FOR-PROFIT PRISON INDUSTRY

Hillary Clinton was a friend and supporter — and beneficiary — of the private prison industry. From Lee Fang’s reporting:

As we reported yesterday, fully five Clinton bundlers work for the lobbying and law firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld. Corrections Corporation of America, the largest private prison company in America, paid Akin Gump $240,000 in lobbying fees last year. The firm also serves as a law firm for the prison giant, representing the company in court.

She cut ties with the industry a few months ago, under pressure from Black Lives Matters and others. But why was she in bed with this corrupt industry in the first place? And why is her campaign continuing to benefit from industry connections, as reported in Politico on February 2:

Despite the refunds, Clinton campaign continues to benefit handsomely from the fundraising assistance of some closely connected to the private prison business. In another report filed Sunday night, the campaign disclosed that Richard Sullivan of Capitol Counsel—until recently,a Raleigh, N.C.-based federally registered lobbyist for the for-profit prison operator GEO Group—bundled $69,363 in donations for Clinton in the fourth quarter, bringing his total for the year to a whopping $274,891